The Color of Flowers
by Cygna-hime
Summary: A vsist to a grave, a truce, and a few bouquets.


**_Tsukimineshrine challenge_: The Art of Flowers**

**_Stipulations:_** **  
Genre: Any  
Canon: Yes!  
Rating: G to PG-13  
Length: around 1500 words  
Special Requirements: You must have a plot centering around flowers, and not just the giving of, but maybe like the special meanings of certain flowers (flower colors) or something a bit more creative than someone just giving someone a bunch of them. You have to include a scene between your favorite and least favorite character.**

**_Stuff:_ This is the most pointless thing in the world. I just thought you should know. Oh, and a big thank-you to L-chan for the list of meanings! Yay you!**

**_Disclaimer/Warnings:_ Still not mine.**** Contains het. Eek.**

The Color of Flowers

The cemetery is a nice place, really. Trees stand all around, myrtle and forsythia and azalea, more like a garden than a grave. They are all in bloom now, in that moment in spring when the early flowers linger on and the late are opening. A gentle wind ruffles the hair of the silent family on the hill.

The father is first. He quietly steps forward, alone. His children stay behind. This time is for him. He leans the bouquet of fern and lavender against the delicately carved stone, and ever so carefully twines a curling strand of ivy through the singing angel's upraised hands. With tender hands that no longer shake he kisses his hand to the grey-eyed figure. A watcher who wished to see might think the stone face's lips smiled just the slightest amount. He certainly thinks so, for he smiles back.

The daughter is next. With eyes that dance even now she skips forward to the mother-stone. She is no longer a child, but she will always be so to her mother, even when she is old. She will never grow up. Her gift is a child's gift in a woman's hands. She places the day lily wreath on the angel's head like a crown, laughing when it tilts over the stone eyes. The angels is laughing with her, for those who choose to see. When the wreath is arranged to their satisfaction, the daughter seats herself on the green grave facing the angel. She speaks of everything and nothing in a child's voice, telling her mother all the things she couldn't call her to talk about this week.

The son is waiting, quiet on the hill. He will not speak or hurry. He will wait in silence for his own time. His mother will not forget him.

The other son looks at him. He did not think it would be this way. When he agreed to go with the daughter to visit her mother, he had not thought her brother would be there. He knows he should have thought. But he did not. The daughter, not daughter to him but wife, asked and he agreed. He would have agreed to anything she asked of him. But he had not thought it would end with him, alone, and her brother. Were it anywhere else, they would fight. But the son is too sad and too silent. This is a time of truce.

"She is so like Mother," the son says. The other son answers without thinking.

"She is herself."

"Yes," says the son, "I know."

"Why," the other son cannot help but ask, "are the flowers so colorful? They are usually white."

"She hated white flowers," says the son. "She said they were boring."

"Besides," he continues, "they don't mean anything." The other son does not understand. "She loved flowers because they meant something special to her. She looked, and they told her things. But she said white flowers didn't say anything. So we never give her white ones." The other son nods. He almost feels he understands the way his wife's mother was.

"I'm sorry," he says. "That she's gone, I mean."

"You're luckier than you know," replies the son calmly.

"So are you." The son looks across the grass to the father waiting patient, silent.

"Perhaps I am." They say nothing else for a long time.

Finally the daughter is finished and rejoins her husband, smiling through her tears and ready to tell him about how she almost saw the mother there once they are away from the silent hill. The son is last to step forward and greet all that's left of the woman he can no longer see. Zinnia drop from his hands in a fountain of colors, scarlet and purple and yellow, coming to rest around the foot of the stone. One hand brushes the curled lettering, and then he stands and returns to his family. He has not spoken.

The other son looks after his dark retreating back as they return to the car. He begins to understand a little more about his erstwhile adversary. He wonders why his wife chose this day to ask him to come with her. A smile quirks his features. Magic is loose in the world. Who knows if even she knows how much she is capable of?

A glint of gold sparkles in the corner of his eye, but when he turns he sees nothing but a flower-bedecked headstone on a tree-covered hill.

The End

**I would like to know if anyone a)caught all the flower references, or b)cares if they did or not. Also, I like this poetic mode. How do you feel? More? Less? My head on a platter? Remember, I can't make it better if I don't know what's wrong!**


End file.
